Speaker
MARÍA PAZ GARCÍA-VERA
COMPLUTENSE UNIVERSITY OF MADRID. SPAIN
Full Professor of Psychology at the Complutense University, Specialist in Clinical Psychology, and Academician of the Spanish Academy of Psychology. Her career, reflected in 185 scientific publications, the direction and participation in 50 funded research projects, 23 supervised theses, and more than 200 presentations at congresses, has received numerous awards such as the Rafael Burgaleta Research Award, the José Luis Pinillos Award for Excellence in Psychology, the UCM Research Transfer Award, or the Lafourcade-Ponce Research Award, and recognitions such as Honorary Member of the Official College of Psychology of the Valencian Community, or the Miguel Hernández University recognition as one of the 20 most influential women in contemporary Spanish psychology.
Growing up under trauma: posttraumatic stress disorder in children and adolescents
It is estimated that 30-70% of adolescents have experienced a traumatic event at some point in their lives, and more than a third have experienced several. Following these events, most children and adolescents will exhibit mild or moderate negative psychological reactions that are considered normal given the severity of the event and will begin to decrease within a few days. However, in other children, these reactions will be more intense, pervasive, and frequent or will not decrease over time, leading to impairment in important areas of functioning. Among these reactions, those that stand out for their high frequency are understood under the construct of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This conference will address the latest advances in defining PTSD in children and adolescents, its differential characteristics with PTSD in adults, the key symptoms that allow for its identification, and the most effective therapies for its treatment.